The Jewish Ethicist: Disciplining Workers

Can I make my employees pay for their carelessness?

Q. I just discovered that an employee recorded transactions in
a careless way that is against our company's explicit rules. When I
demanded that he go back and do the work properly on his own time, he
asserted that I have no right to ask him to work without pay.

A. It's easy to understand your frustration. The manager has the right to
expect that his workers will be careful and assiduous. Jewish law states
that employees have a responsibility to work to the best of their ability.
(1) And the employer has every right to dismiss a worker who under-performs
after being given a reasonable opportunity to meet company standards. (2)

However, it's a long way from your right to let this worker go to having
the right to compel him to work without pay.

It's true that a worker who causes actual damage to your firm can be compelled to either repair the damage or pay for it, just as a non-worker can. In Jewish law, workers also have some additional responsibility that does not apply to an outside individual, especially when they are entrusted with company property or are given authority to represent the firm. (3) But despite this technical liability, Jewish law discourages imposing sanctions on workers due to normal carelessness. (4)

Furthermore, doing careless paperwork is not the same as causing damage. You're no
worse off than if the work hadn't been done at all. In fact, given that
fact that the worker was at the workplace busy with his tasks, you can't
even dock his pay.

It may seem unfair to ask you to pay for work that was never done, but
remember that an employee is not like a contractor. A contractor is hired
to get the job done; an employee is hired to carry out orders to the best
of his ability. It's just not fair to the worker to impose such a heavy
responsibility on him.

An additional problem with sanctions is that very often they are a way to make
the worker pay for mistakes that are really due to the shortcomings of
management. Where were you, the manager, all those months that these
transactions were improperly recorded? A worker is not just a machine that
you can wind up and let go; the employee needs appropriate guidance,
encouragement and supervision.

If the nature of your work is such that it is critical to be able to create
monetary sanctions for worker carelessness, then you need to carefully
craft a compensation system that will achieve this goal. For example, you
can compensate workers with a base salary and a bonus, where it is
understood that the bonus is paid only for exemplary work, and egregious
errors will lead to deductions. But the average salaried worker should not
have to pay out of his own pocket, or his own private hours, for work of
inferior quality as long as he was present at work and busy with his
assigned tasks.

The Talmud has the following advice: "Someone who has inherited a lot of
money and wants to lose them…should hire workers without supervising
them." In other words, this is a certain way to lose money. The employer
has to acknowledge his own share of responsibility for losses caused by a worker who worked
without adequate oversight. (5)

The Jewish Ethicist presents some general principles of Jewish law. For specific questions and direct application, please consult a qualified Rabbi.

The Jewish Ethicist is a joint project of Aish.com and the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem. To find out more about business ethics and Jewish values for the workplace, visit the JCT Center for Business Ethics website at www.besr.org.

About the Author

Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir is Research Director at the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem (www.besr.org). He studied at Harvard, received a PhD in Economics from MIT, and rabbinic ordination from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Prior to moving to Israel, he worked at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Reagan administration. Rabbi Dr. Meir is also a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Jerusalem College of Technology and has published several articles on business, economics and Jewish law. He is the author of the two-volume, "Meaning in Mitzvot (Feldheim), and his Aish.com columns form the basis of the "Jewish Ethicist" book (ktav.com).

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 2

(2)
al puglisi,
June 3, 2003 12:00 AM

illegal

I enjoyed this article. However, ethics aside, to force an employee to pay for a mistake, even one due to carelessness is against the law.One can see the wisdom of this law when one consideres the abuses that might take place in its absence.

(1)
sarah shapiro,
June 3, 2003 12:00 AM

.

As usual, this column is fascinating and useful. I await the anthology

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We have a canistel (or eggfruit) tree our backyard which we’d like to get rid of. We do not eat its fruit, and the fruit and leaves make a constant mess. I haven’t found anyone who is interested in its fruit – even to take it from us for free. I would like to replace it with an orange tree (we live in Miami). Is there any problem doing so?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

The Torah actually writes specifically that we may not cut down fruit trees (Deuteronomy 20:19-20). From this the Sages learn a more general principle that one may not purposelessly waste or destroy anything of value – food, good utensils, clothes, etc. (see e.g. Talmud Baba Kama 91b, Shabbat 140b).

The Talmud (Baba Kama 91-92) distinguishes that whenever there is a legitimate reason, one may cut down a fruit tree – if it damages other trees or plants, if it’s not productive and not worth its upkeep, if it’s more valuable for the wood, etc. The commentators include in this dispensation when ones needs the space the tree is growing on (Rosh Baba Kama 8:15).

There is, however, a frightening line in the Talmud there which makes people much more hesitant to rely on the above leniency. Rabbi Chanina stated that his son died young as a punishment for his cutting a fig tree before its time. Thus apart from the legal issue of destroying a productive tree, this law appears to carry with it severe Divine retribution.

Most authorities explain that this punishment is incurred only if a person cuts down a fruit tree without legitimate reason, but there is a minority opinion that it is incurred even if the tree is cut with good reason.

As a result, even in cases where a legitimate reason applies, people generally take an extra precaution of first selling the tree to a non-Jew, and having a non-Jew do the actual cutting. (The entire prohibition does not apply to non-Jews.) Your case is also better in that you are cutting one fruit tree to plant another, more productive one. Even with all of this, it’s preferable, if possible, to leave a part of the original tree intact.

In 1942, Hitler devised a plan for a Museum of Judaism, to remember the dead Jewish religion, culture and people. Millions of Jewish treasures -- Torah scrolls, ritual objects, books and art -- were looted by the Nazis and taken to warehouses. In Czechoslovakia, the objects were taken to the Jewish Museum in Prague, where the Jews themselves were forced to sort, label, and pack the items for use in the Nazi's future museum. After the war, many of these items were recovered, including thousands of Torah scrolls and nearly one million books. These were distributed to Jewish communities worldwide, as a living testimony to the indestructibility of the Jewish people.

One who humiliates another person in public ... even though he may be a scholar and may have done many good deeds, nevertheless loses his portion in the eternal world (Ethics of the Fathers 3:15).

Imagine a situation: you have a fine home, a well-paying job, a comfortable car, and a substantial retirement annuity. If you do a single thoughtless act, you will lose everything you have worked to achieve: home, job, car, and savings. What kind of precautions would you take to avoid even the remotest possibility of incurring such a disaster? Without doubt, you would develop an elaborate system of defenses to assure that this event would never occur.

The Talmud tells us that everything we have worked for during our entire lives can be forfeited in one brief moment of inconsideration: we embarrass another person in public. Perhaps we may say something insulting or make a demeaning gesture. Regardless of how it occurs, the Talmud states that if we cause another person to turn pale because of being humiliated in public, we have committed the equivalent of bloodshed.

Still, we allow our tongues to wag so easily. If we give serious thought to the words of the Talmud, we would exercise the utmost caution in public and be extremely sensitive to other people's feelings, lest an unkind word or degrading gesture deprive us of all our spiritual merits.

Today I shall...

try to be alert and sensitive to other people's feelings and take utmost caution not to cause anyone to feel humiliated.

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